Dali’s Mustache by Salvador Dalí, Philippe Halsman

With 101 Life magazine covers to his credit, Philippe Halsman (1906-1979) was one of the leading portrait photographers of his time. In addition to his distinguished career in photojournalism, Halsman was one of the great pioneers of experimental photography, motivated by a profound desire to push this youngest of art forms toward new frontiers by using innovative and unorthodox photographic techniques. One of Halsman’s favorite subjects was Salvador Dali, the glittering and controversial painter and theorist with whom the photographer shared a unique friendship and extraordinary professional collaboration that spanned over thirty years. Whenever Dali imagined a photograph so strange that its production seemed impossible, Halsman tried to find the solution, and invariably succeeded. As Halsman explains in his postface, Dali’s Mustache is the fruit of this marriage of the minds. The jointly conceived and seemingly nonsensical questions and answers reveal the gleeful humor and assumed cynicism for which Dali is famous, while the marvelous and inspired images of Dali’s mustache brilliantly display Halsman’s consumate skill and extraordinary inventiveness as a photographer. This combination of wit, absurdity, and the off-handedly profound is irresistible and has contributed to the enduring fascination inspired by this unique photographic interview, which has become a cult classic and valuable collector’s item since its original publication in 1954. The present volume faithfully reproduces the first edition and will introduce a new generation to the irreverent humor and imaginative genius of two great artists. – Goodreads Takeaway: These photographs by Philippe Halsman of Dali captures the very essence of the artist. Dali is almost distinguishable via his famous mustache, it is as if his mustache is a manifestation of himself. Like what I have read in E.H Gombrich’s essay, masks could stand for “crude distinctions, the deviations from the norm which mark a person off  from others.” which is exactly what Dali’s mustache is. It epitomises him. The last work which is of a mobile does not need Dali’s face but just representations of his face. It also supports what I read in Gombrich’s essay about the displacement of facial features, no matter how we rearrange them, they still are distinguishable.

Oliver Jeffers – Dipped Paintings

HERE OR THERE is predominately a portraiture exhibition, a space where Oliver Jeffers takes an anthropological approach in rendering subjects of various religious and ethnographic backgrounds. Diverging from his well-known illustration work for children’s picture books, Jeffers explores the chasm between logic thought and emotional impulse.

In a departure from his previous work that ropes in mathematical equations as a method to unravel the traditional portraiture conventions, in HERE OR THERE social satire and elements of the fantastic combine to create subjective renderings of the modern day condition. In a nice curatorial flourish, the artist himself handwrites the artwork titles and various quotes around the exhibition in chalk on the blackboard painted walls at Gestalten Space.

One of Jeffers’ approaches to portraiture that I would have enjoyed seeing more examples of were his paint-dipped works. In Without A Doubt Part I, a bust portrait of an Asian lady is obscured from the chin down by black paint that the artist has dipped the work in, gilt gold frame and all.

– Berlin Art Link

Takeaway: Jeffers used dipped paint to cover a portrait of a woman partially. This somehow arouses more interest as we wonder what the woman actually look like, what is behind the dipped paint. Does covering up conceals who she really is or do our interpretation of her makes her who she is?

Problem Paintings by Urs Fischer

In recent times, Fischer has been exploring the genres of classical art history (still lifes, portraits, nudes, landscapes, and interiors) at the intersection with everyday life—in cast sculptures and assemblages, paintings, digital montages, spatial installations, mutating or kinetic objects, and texts.

Around the walls, the paintings—vintage publicity headshots, colored and enlarged to a monumental scale, then obstructed by silkscreened images such as a bolt or a banana—present a clash of representational systems that is both convulsive and darkly humorous. 

– https://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/urs-fischer–february-23-2012

Fischers subversive approach to art is often considered to be influenced by anti-art movements like Neo-Dada, Lost Art or the Situationist International.  Since Fischer began showing his work, in the mid-nineteen-nineties, in Europe, he has produced an enormous number of objects, drawings, collages, and room-size installations.  

– http://artfucksme.com/problem-paintings-by-urs-fischer/

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TAKEAWAY: Urs Fischer employs the method of layering to his portraits. Using vintage publicity headshots, he is calling on to the past but erasing it at the same time by crudely placing images such as eggs on them. I like how impact could be achieved via layering two distinctly different things that do no necessarily go together. Forceful juxtaposition provides a very stark contrast and could be visually arresting. 

Ad Infinitum by Kris Vervaeke

For the past few years Belgian photographer Kris Vervaeke has travelled to cemeteries in Hong Kong and photographed thousands of small portraits affixed to tombstones. Recently publishing a selection of these images in his book Ad Infinitum, the simplicity of its concept and execution is incredibly powerful. The faces, which remain anonymous in the book, have been worn away from exposure to the elements over time, yet their destruction from rain, sun, extreme temperatures and humidity has gained them a simple abstract beauty. This unlikely and moving body of work, though haunting in nature, offers viewers an opportunity to reflect on the mysterious and often overlooked relationship between photography, memory and death. Sad sentiments, but so very beautifully done. – It’s Nice That 

Takeaway:  These portraits are haunting and serves a reminder on the impermanence of life. Memories of the deceased are the only way to hold on to the past, but through time, even memories will fade. What is left are stories/narratives that are told and retold. Perhaps, this is how a memory could live on because once it is forgotten, it is hard to fix the fragments back together. 

Face-O-Mat by Tobias Gutmann

Tobias Gutmann is a swiss illustrator who travels around the world with his analogue portrait machine and draw faces of people. The Face-O-Mat lets Gutmann sit on one side of the machine, taking portrait requests from strangers. Gutmann’s interpretation of these faces are far from naturalistic and are very abstract. He rearranges the facial features but they still somehow look like a face. Gutmann is able to capture the essence of the person he is drawing, focusing on the distinguishable. The reactions of the people he drew are priceless. Some of them don’t actually agree that they look so abstract but an abstract portrait could very much show accurately the true nature of a person through the spontaneous and honest strokes. 

The mask here stands for crude distinctions, the deviations from the norm which mark a person off from others. – E.H Gombrich, The Mask and the Face: The Perception of Physiognomic Likeness in Life and in Art

Wotsit all about by James Ostrer

“Junk food dredges up some complicated feelings for James Ostrer. He vividly remembers his parents’ split as a kid. His father’s weekend routine of taking Ostrer and his sister to McDonald’s after bickering with his mother left his associations with Happy Meals decidedly…unhappy. Later, Ostrer found himself combating his stress with unhealthy food, which became more difficult to stomach as he got older.

So the British photographer decided to explore his relationship with junk food in a peculiar way—by dousing himself in it. Ostrer’s Wotsit all about project features close-up photographs of himself, friends, and even his father carefully glopped with a vast, rainbow assortment of fast food, candies, cold cuts, pastries, you name it, over their faces and bodies. The “portraits” are messy, fascinating, and comically creepy, like a cartoon roundup of childhood obesity culprits come to life, warning little kids to eat their vegetables. “I wanted to completely engulf myself in these food types to this extreme level,” Ostrer said to NPR. “The process of creating these was a kind of a cathartic experience.” – GOOD

images by James Ostrer

Takeaway: It is interesting to see how Ostrer explores his relationship with junk food through an artistic channel, creating monstrous portraits that reflects the quote “you are what you eat”. The process of placing these food items and covering the faces of his subjects is somewhat erasing these people’s identities where they hide behind the comfort of food without realising that they have manifested into a slave of food. The portraits have a very primitive almost mask like quality to them. Perhaps a ‘mask’ could be an actual reflection of inner desires and addictions that you can’t shake off.